Zugl.: Salt Lake City, Utah, Univ. of Utah, 2007 / Hergestellt on demand

My project offers a set of comparative close readings of texts by E.T.A. Hoffmann and Honoré de Balzac. Balzac’s early fiction, I contend, grapples with questions relating to the representational practice of mimesis through an explicit engagement with Hoffmann’s work. Hoffmann’s fiction, in turn, proves itself repeatedly to contain the traces of a proto-realist tendency, through its playful interventions into the staging of narrative creation. The contribution of my project to scholarship is twofold. First, it offers comparative readings of texts that have not yet been drawn together, hoping to re-adjust the common ascriptions of ‘Romanticism’ and ‘Realism’ to Hoffmann and Balzac respectively, and to identify a new complication in the relationship of those generic categories. Second, it articulates a new account of mimesis. By drawing on the work of twentieth-century theorists such as Erich Auerbach, Walter Benjamin and Merleau-Ponty, it shows that ‘mimesis’ refers not merely to the imitation of an object, but rather to the reproduction of a particular sensory experience of that object. This perspective on mimesis allows me to unfold new readings of the two authors. How is life compromised in the name of fiction, of the artwork? This question recurs compulsively in Hoffmann’s tales, figured in repeated and near-repeated scenarios in which the everyday is pitted against an ideal or delusional alternative. When Balzac imitates or repeats this mimetic question in the works I consider, it is invariably figured in the image of Hoffmann, called upon as a fictional co-author or authorial double, or as a para-textual element, often in highly visual terms. The thesis thus addresses what I have come to term the ‘stakes of mimesis’. If a particular compromise, or particular stakes, are involved in the creation of fictions, for Balzac those stakes are drawn in distinctly Hoffmannesque terms. The thesis is structured according to the conviction that the relationship between the two writers is not simply a linear one of filiation or influence, but one led by a more complicated sense of imitation. To this end, I take to task the conventional figure of the narrative ‘line’ and follow it through various Romantic and modernist complications. My first chapter, ‘Chiasm’, works as a conceptual introduction to the readings, tracing a particular account of literary mimesis from Plato to Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The four subsequent chapters each read a pair of texts by Hoffmann and Balzac alongside one another. Chapter Two, ‘Line’, focuses on the arabesque lines of Der goldne Topf and La Peau de chagrin. Chapter Three, under the emblem ‘Trope’, examines the paper identities of characters in Die Abenteuer der Sylvester-Nacht and Le Colonel Chabert. Chapter Four, ‘Figure’, considers the delusional artist figures and ekphrastic narrative frameworks of Der Artushof and Le Chef-d’œuvre inconnu. Finally, Chapter Five, ‘Cross’, examines questions of inheritance between Die Elixiere des Teufels and L’Élixir de longue vie. In unfolding these emblematic figures as models of reading, I seek new ways of thinking about the relationship between these two authors, and about the act of comparative reading.

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Robert Schumann (1810-1856) var en tysk romantisk tonsättare som främst har skrivit många verk för piano och sång. Han var en känslosam person med en rik inre värld, som trots många motgångar i livet alltid fann hopp i kärleken eller i fantasivärlden. Syftet med detta arbete var att utforska grunden till Schumanns musikskapande och vad som har lett honom till att komponera på det sättet han gjorde. Genom att nå en djupare förståelse för bakgrunden till hans kreativa skapandet har jag som pianist kunnat arbeta med och tolka verket Fantasiestücke Op. 12 på ett sätt som tar hänsyn till Schumanns livsöde. Studien genomfördes metodiskt med hjälp av olika litteraturstudier samt internetkällor. För instuderingen av verket Fantasiestücke Op. 12 användes noter av G. Henle-förlaget. Studiens resultat visade, vilken stor roll litteraturen, kärleken till Clara Wieck och Schumanns psykiska ohälsa spelade för skapandet av hans pianoverk Fantasiestücke Op. 12. Verket skrevs under sommaren 1837, en tidsperiod, där han var mycket fascinerade av romantikens stora författare E.T.A. Hoffmann. Samtidigt var det en tid där han började drabbas av olika sjukdomar som ledde till en signifikant handskada och förstärkt psykisk ohälsa. Det var också fasen då han kämpade för att förverkliga sin kärlek med Clara Wieck.

Diese Examensarbeit untersucht die Verbindung zwischen Die unendliche Geschichte von Michael Ende und der deutschen Epoche Romantik. Dies wird anhand einer textimmanenten Analyse von Die unendliche Geschichte und E.T.A Hoffmanns romantisches Werk Der goldne Topf durchgeführt.

Zugl.: Freiburg (Breisgau), Univ., Habil.-Schr., 2006/2007

Diss. New York Univ., 2008.

Diss. New York Univ., 2008.